Z Nation: Emily & Michael's Story
by RagingTanker090
Summary: My new Z Nation fanfic! Follow Emily Erlin, an ex-Marine, and Michael Carden, a college student, across the country in an effort to link up with the group they heard about from Citizen Z. Along the way, they meet Mack and Addy. Events begin just before "Die Zombie Die...Again". Rated T for violence and language.
1. The Nightmare

**A/N: Welcome to my new fanfic based on Z Nation!  
**

I sat up slowly, tiredly. Emily wasn't in the cab of the truck. I opened the door and jumped out.

"Emily?" I called out, softly at first. I called out again, a little louder. "Emily?" No response still. Now, I called out frantically, as loud as I could. She could probably hear me if she was a mile away, given this open land. "EMILY?!"

I looked in the bed of the truck. She was there, laying on her side. I got very worried, because she had been laying there and had not responded. I jumped up into the bed and gently shook her.

"Emily?" I said again. Suddenly, she turned towards me quickly. But "she" wasn't Emily anymore...

"No..." I murmured as zombie Emily growled. In my shock, I stepped back and fell over the side of the truck. I landed hard. A sharp pain coursed through my body, and I winced with the pain. I could clearly tell I had broken a bone in my leg. There was no escape...The Z leaped down from the truck. "Don't do this..." I said.

Suddenly I felt a slap on my cheek and the Z disappeared. "What the?" I said out loud.

"Dammit, Michael, wake up!" I heard Emily's voice.

I shot up very suddenly in a cold sweat, breathing heavily. Emily was holding me tightly. "Thank god." She muttered.

"Did you slap me?" I asked.

"Yeah, I had to wake you. You were...shaking and muttering incoherent things. I thought you were having a seizure or something. You had me worried sick." She replied, with a soft look in her eyes.

"For once." I muttered jokingly, and she responded with another slap. It was clearly playful, but still hard. "Ow! Hey!" She just grinned widely. Emily was always harder, more rough, more gruff, than necessary. But that's what I loved most about her. Her attitude meant our survival.

She was a hardcore Marine who'd served two tours of duty in Afghanistan when this all happened. She'd saved me from joining the Z's when they attacked my college in northern Wisconsin, and we'd traveled together after that. We gradually grew attached to each other.

"So you wanna tell me what happened?" Emily asked after a moment.

"I dunno if I should..."

She grabbed me and pinned me against the seat, a furious look in her eyes.

'There we go. That's the Emily I know.' I thought. I don't know why I loved her seemingly bi-polar attitude. There was something about the way she went from "I love you" to "I'm going to put a bullet through your brain" and back that made me love her more than any other girl I had dated before.

"You're going to tell me, and you're going to tell me NOW." Emily hissed.

"Okay, okay. It was a really remote place. Practically a desert, nothing around for miles. I woke up in the back of the truck and you weren't there. So I went looking for you and I find you, or what I thought was you, in the back of the truck. I tried shaking you awake and suddenly you were a Z. And you attacked me. I fell off the side of the truck and broke my leg. You were...about to..." I trailed off.

Emily gave no response, just had that damn sympathetic, soft look in her eyes. Honestly, I hated that look. I hated her worrying about me. A badass girl like Emily who toted an 50-cal machine-gun around with her shouldn't have to worry about some insignificant guy like me. But she did, because she loved me. I was the only person who could make Emily not look like a massive jerk. And she was still like that around me, sometimes. When she met me, her first words were, "I hope your life was worth saving, prick." It sounds rude, and it probably was meant as such at first, but after a while it became Emily's way of displaying affection. Usually.

"Well, I don't look like a Z, do I?" She grinned, slipping an arm around me.

"No." I replied, a small smile returned.

"The only time you and I are going to be Z's is when we grow old and die together. For now, we've got my 50-cal, you with the M14 I gave you, and just about every grenade and blade we both can carry. If anything's going to stop us, it's going to need to be a Z the size of a Titan." She continued, kissing me lightly on the cheek.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. So, uh, good morning?" God dammit, why did I have to be so awkward?

Emily voiced my frustration at my previous sentence in her own way. "Good god, boy, you are so awkward. You just love ruining our moments, don't you?" She said, retaining her smile but rolling her eyes. She moved up into the driver's seat.

I smiled back, quite sheepishly. "Yes, dear, you are always right." I joked as I climbed into the passenger seat of the truck, and we were soon off on another apocalyptic road trip.


	2. Wakita, Part 1

"Keep lookout for town signs. We need supplies." Emily said over the din of the roaring engine. Out here in the miles of open road emptiness, a truck sounded a lot louder than it did in the city. "Soon as we see a sign, you're driving. I'll get on the 50-cal."

I just nodded. Emily was freaking amazing when it came to her guns. She'd managed to get an M14 with a scope and suppressor. That had come from a box of memorandum her father had from his service in Vietnam. She was surprised it had been in firing condition. Later, she found a suppressor for the 50-cal, which she'd taken from the top of an M2 Bradley during what we called the Massacre at Highway 29. The 50-cal. Now that was a fine weapon. The Army had been using it since World War II, with a few modifications made over the years. The fact that it had served so long made it perhaps the best machine-gun in history. And seeing Emily rip apart a small horde of Z's with a few bursts, I'd have to be blind to not believe it.

Soon, we rumbled past a sign that said Wakita, Oklahoma: 5 miles. I looked over at Emily. "That sign...my childhood was built around the fictional version of this town that was ripped apart by a tornado in a movie..." She gave me a confused look. "Twister. One of the greatest drama-type movies of the '80s. If you haven't seen it, you haven't really lived."

"Well, if we make it out of this, we'll find a copy and we'll watch it together." She smiled. "Any connection to what once was, I want to remember."

I nodded. "It's one of my favorites."

"As if I didn't get that already." She replied with a playful roll of her eyes.

Soon, we got closer to the town. And several Z's were roaming around. They say that the virus started in the rural areas and they gradually flocked to the cities. Of course, in the larger rural towns, some still roamed around.

"I guess Wakita got hit by a new disaster." I muttered.

"Alright, let's move." Emily said, with that commanding tone she'd inherited from being a Marine Sergeant. She hopped out, quickly grabbed the M14 and tossed it into the passenger seat for me. Then she went around to the back, where she had the 50-cal bolted down to the top of the cab, the ammo cans on the floor. I ran around to the driver's side.

"Punch it, Michael!" I could hear Emily's ecstatic voice. She enjoyed thrills like this. I'd be lying if I said it didn't worry me sometimes. Like she'd get too cocky and get herself killed.

I stepped on the gas and we were off. _THUM THUM THUM THUM THUM! _Emily was firing already. I watched a Z to the right of the truck take several 50-caliber bullets. I could see the holes the machine-gun left as the Z flew backwards with the force.

"Scratch another!" Emily yelled. _THUM THUM THUM THUM THUM!_


	3. Wakita, Part 2

I said I was worried about Emily being so aggressive with the Z's, but it didn't frighten me. Worry and fear are two different things. Fear can only be manifested toward things; things that pose a danger toward you. Likewise, worry is manifested in the opposite: things that you care for, things that you love, things that are not dangerous (though in the case of Emily, the latter is debatable).

Emily cleared the outskirts of the town with the machine-gun, quite effectively. When she killed the last Z, she exclaimed, "Damn, I was just starting to have fun!"

"Don't worry, babe, I'm sure there'll be plenty in the city limits!" I called back, with a grin.

"Hell yeah!" She yelled. Retaining my grin, I punched the gas again.

There were Z's all over the place, but nowhere near as much as we had encountered in the bigger cities like Madison, and especially Dubuque in Iowa.

"You ready for a turkey shoot?" Emily called down. Without waiting for a response, she went to town on the Z's with the machine-gun. _THOOM THOOM THOOM THOOM THUM THUM! _"YEEE-HAWW!"

"I didn't know you had any country girl in you!" I joked.

"In this world, it doesn't really matter where I come from, does it?!" She may have been joking, but she did have a point.

I spotted a Z wandering aimlessly while Emily was taking care of some Z's to our sides. I brought the truck to a halt, and reached over for the M14. I brought the scope up to my eye, lined up the crosshairs effortlessly. There was a muffled _POOM! _and the Z dropped. "That's my first Z in how long?"

"A month, I'd say!" Came Emily's reply. "Too long." That was another thing that worried me. How much Emily _enjoyed_ killing Z's. One of these days I was going to have to ask her what would happen if we ever ran into our families, who were undoubtedly Z's by now.

It wasn't long before we had cleared the majority of the town. "Alright, that's good enough! We'll park here and head across the street to the general store." Emily said.


	4. Supervolcano Emily

Emily and I both had machetes in hand, but the M14 was strapped across my back. Emily was in front, while I followed closely behind. "Be careful, Em. We don't know if there's any Z's in there..."

Emily half-snorted. "You're telling me to be careful?"

"Well..." I started, but she cut me off.

"Boy, you need to keep your mouth shut. Right now you need to worry more about getting slapped than getting attacked by Z's." She said hostilely.

And that was the end of that. I dunno how I was going to talk to her about the possibility of meeting our families if they were Z's, with the attitude she showed right now.

Emily opened the door carefully. No Z's were in sight. But then again, it was almost pitch black in there so it was hard to tell.

"Michael, flashlight!" Emily commanded. I tossed the flashlight to her, and she flicked it on. A quick sweep revealed only one Z, who was on the ground, seemingly crushed by a fallen set of shelves.

Unsure of whether it was alive-dead or dead-dead, Emily ordered me to check it. I slowly made my way over to it, holding the machete in a position where I could immediately kill it if it moved. I kneeled over it, gently prodded the Z with the blade. It turned over quickly and growled. I hesitated a moment. It reached out a hand toward me but it fell short as I quickly drove the tip of the machete into the Z's head.

"Jesus." I muttered. "Next time, we don't even think about whether it's dead or not, we just put the blade in."

"Yes, mom." Emily replied sarcastically. If I hated when Emily got all soft with me, she hated whenever I stated anything that sounded remotely close to an order.

As we walked around, looking for useful things, I decided it was a good time to bring up my thought from earlier. "You know, Emily, I've been thinking..."

"Oh, no, he's thinking again." Emily joked.

"I'm being serious. You know, we're going around places and you seem to enjoy killing Z's." I continued.

Emily had a strange look on her face, unsure of where this was going.

"But what if we meet your family, or mine, and they're Z's?"

"If they're Z's, I won't care. They're not my family anymore, they're Z's." Emily replied with a stern look.

I was a bit skeptical of Emily's confidence, but dismissed the discussion. We ended up at the door to the offices with very little found in the way of food, water, and other supplies. "There could be useful stuff in here..." Emily said. She tried the door...locked. "Ready the M14. If there's any Z's in there, they'll come after us when I try to break open this door."

I nodded and grabbed the stock of the M14 to pull it off my back.. Emily threw her shoulder into the frail wooden door a few times. Suddenly it burst open, but instead of flying away from her, it flew towards her as a Z attacked. "Shit!" She screamed. "Take it out, Michael!"

It reached out towards her, and I fired. The 7.62mm bullet went straight through the Z's head, and Emily slowly backed up as it fell.

"You couldn't have shot it any sooner?!" She hissed at me. The panic of the situation had made her anger boil. All the tension that had built up during the clearing of the town, the short little argument outside the store, and now this; it suddenly exploded like the supervolcano under Yellowstone in the movie "2012".

The only thing you could do in this situation was to let her run her course. I shrank down somewhat against the flowing fire of her fury. "God dammit, sometimes you're a good-for-nothing prick." She continued, shaking her head in a kind of disgust. I tried to tune out the rest; but as a summary, it was quite a bit more cursing me out and screaming in my face.

"If I didn't love you, I would have shot you by now. Wasted a full can of ammo on your ass." That was probably the end of it. That was usually how Emily's tirades ended, with a variation of, 'If I didn't love you, I would have killed you.' Then she got all soft again, kissed me softly and murmured, "I'm sorry." At the end of that kind of rage, I was okay with her being soft. "I'm sorry." She repeated with a sigh, holding me close to her. I blinked very slowly, in a sort of relieved way.


	5. Friends In Low Places

**A/N: This chapter is longer than all the others I've posted so far to make up for the rather short chapters that preceded it. Emily and Michael meet Mack and Addy in this chapter. Also, the title of this chapter, "Friends In Low Places" is a reference to a George Strait song. It's meant to symbolize the making of friends in such a dire time as the zombie apocalypse.**

The offices had soup cans in the kitchen cabinets and water bottles in the fridge. We encountered no more Z's in the office area. "Perfect." Emily mused. "Grab as much as you can and let's go."

I grabbed a case of water and put a few cans on top. Emily grabbed a handful of cans and kept her machete in the other in case we had to get through some Z's to get to the truck. She opened the door just as carefully as she had when we'd entered the store.

Light flooded into our eyes, but we adjusted quickly. There were three Z's roaming about. Emily handed the cans she was holding to me with a twisted grin. "Stand back, boy, and watch how it's done!"

Emily casually strolled toward the first Z, or that's what it looked like in my mind. Maybe she ran, I don't know. She swung the machete like a bat, slicing the Z's head clean off. The next she sliced in half at the waist, then drove the blade down into its skull. The last she completely passed up, and before it could turn to face her she put a boot to its back, knocking it down. She took the machete in the style of victorious knights in the Middle Ages, and drove it into the back of the Z's head.

"Hot damn." I muttered. I loaded the supplies into the back seat and we were off. We found ourselves in a forested area after a while. We came across a motorcycle, seemingly abandoned on the side of the road. Emily was content to just leave it be, but I disagreed. "I don't think it's 'abandoned', Em. Think about it. We might meet another survivor."

She half-laughed and said, "Yeah, right."

"Come on, Emily!" I pleaded. "If they really abandoned it, then we have nothing to worry about. If they're Z's, we can easily give them mercy. And if they're alive, well we could really use some more people with us."

"Fine." She grumbled, handing me the M14. "You're on point, this time. Since it's your idea and all."

We both got out of the truck and headed past the motorcycle. There was a blanket of some sort leaning against it, which made me more confident that it wasn't abandoned. Then we heard a woman crying. "That means there's at least one survivor!" I murmured, and walked more quickly, almost a run.

"Michael, wait! We don't know what kind of survivors they are!" Emily yelled after me, but I don't think I heard her. What she meant was that they could be cannibals, thieves or bandits, or every other bad thing under the sun. I hadn't even thought about it at the time. I guess I was lucky.

I came upon the outskirts of a clearing near a body of water, a lake maybe. Emily was hurrying to catch up to me. I saw two people about my age, a guy in a leather jacket, who must have been the owner of the bike, trying to comfort a girl who wore a similar jacket.

I stopped for a moment to wait for Emily, so we could meet them together. "Stand up here with the M14. I'll go meet them." She ordered when she got to my side. I nodded and she kept walking, towards the couple.

"You people alright?" I heard Emily say.

The guy seemed somewhat surprised to see survivors. "Yeah, we're fine I guess." He said.

"We're sorry to intrude, but this idiot-" Emily said, with a gesture and glare towards me. I put the M14 down and waved sheepishly, as in 'Yeah, that's me...'. "-saw the motorcycle and got all hopeful there'd be survivors. Freaking kid sometimes, I tell you."

The guy shrugged. "I guess it's always nice to meet other good people. I'm Mack, and this is Addy."

"Sergeant Emily Erlin, 2nd Marine Division." Emily greeted, with a half-hearted salute.

I hurried to meet them. "I'm Michael. It's good to meet other survivors."

At this point, I thought, there was no way they could be anything but ordinary people just trying to survive this hell, good people. "Are you two headed anywhere in particular? Or just kind of wandering around aimlessly trying to avoid the Z's?" I asked curiously. One day that curiousity was going to get me killed.

"We were part of a rather large group, seven including us, headed to California on a mission. This guy named Murphy has the antibodies for the virus, and we've got to get him to some lab so we can stop all this." Addy explained.

"But we got separated in Kansas. We were just going to head to California and hope they all made it there to meet us." Mack added.

"You mean there's a potential cure?" I asked, shocked.

"Well, count us in! Sounds like it's imperative you get there, and any help you need we'll be willing to provide." Emily said.

Mack shrugged. "Well, alright then. Great."

"We've got a bunch of soup cans and a case of water we raided from the general store in a town about a hundred miles back." Emily said.

"WATER?!" Mack and Addy said in unison.

"Go ahead, but don't drink all of it!" Emily laughed.

The four new friends raced to the road. Mack and Addy ground to a halt when they saw the truck, marveling the 50-cal mounted to the top.

"Beautiful thing, isn't it? I got it from the top of a tank when I saw my unit was being overrun by Z's. We were ordered to evacuate in any way we could. I found this truck and loaded as much ammo as I could into the back. Later I bolted it to the top of the truck." Emily explained. "And Michael's M14? I got that from my dad's old collection of stuff from Vietnam. I kept it with me during my service as a backup for the good ol' M4 and ended up tossing away the M4 during the evacuation because I knew it would require a lot of maintenance."

"Emily takes a lot of pride in her guns." I added.

"No kidding..." Mack replied to me.


	6. The Emily I've Never Seen Before

**A/N: I was thoroughly shocked by how well I wrote this chapter. It's a little shorter than the last one, but read this all and consider the fact that I've never been in a relationship myself. Yeah. Let my writing sink in a little bit as I tell you I've never had a girlfriend.**

Emily reached into the truck and grabbed four water bottles, one for each of us. "Drink it sparingly. I wasn't counting on two people joining us but we can make do." She tossed them to us. We drank down a few gulps.

"Can we stay here for just a little longer?" Addy asked, with a shrug as a reply from both Mack and Emily. So we all headed back into the forest area, 'for just a little while longer'. I sat atop the ridge where I'd been while Emily had talked with Mack and Addy. She talked with them now, for 'just a little while'.

She seemed to be enjoying their company. That was a rare sight to see, Emily having a good time. Then again, Emily had only had me, for around three years. No other human contact in that long. I had never gotten to see what she was like before all this. But I loved her for what she was now; I wasn't sure if Emily would be the same person I loved her as when this was over, if it was ever over. And I wouldn't be lying if I said I was scared to see how Emily might change from the girl I knew her as, when, or if, this was all said and done.

Finally she sat down next to me. "This place is beautiful." I said, looking around at the pristine lake, the miles of greenery, and the patches of tall grass swaying in the wind. "Sorry, I sound like a little kid saying that."

Emily held my hand in hers. "No, that's the best thing about you. In the middle of this hell, you can still manage to be so innocent, so naive. That's why I've kept you around. That's why I fell in love with you. You're the most sane person I've ever known." She murmured. Maybe I lied about hating when Emily got soft with me. If I was the most sane person she knew, then it was moments like these that kept me sane. "Don't ever forget what I just told you. Keep being you, sweetheart." Then she leaned in, with those beautiful brown eyes staring deeply into mine.

It was a long, slow kiss. It was the kind that was long enough to let you remember everything you'd ever done together, every argument, every loving moment, leading up to this with a deep fondness. It was the kind that made you think what your life would be without her. 'Dead' would be my answer to that. It was the kind that made you overjoyed, overjoyed that you were in love with the most improbable girl to fall in love with. It was the kind that made you think for just a split second that there was no apocalypse, no Z's trying to rip you apart, and that you lived in a perfect world where nothing could go wrong as long as you were with her.

It was almost painful when she pulled away. "I'm glad we've stopped running for 'just for a little while'. Finally, a good moment between us, where I'm not so awkward that I always ruin it." I said. Emily was still holding my hand firmly as I carefully leaned back until I fell into the grass, to look into the sky as if searching for a sign to confirm this was all real.

Emily laughed at my statement. A genuine laugh. From Emily. I glanced over at her with a look of surprise. "Do you know that in all this time we've been together, I've never heard you laugh?"

"Really? Damn. I'm sorry I'm such a cold-hearted bitch."

"Don't say that." I said. "There really hasn't been a reason to laugh, now that I think about it. We've never taken the time to just stop and reflect. We've been running, always running." After a pause, I said, "I like your laugh."

She let herself fall to the grass now, a small giggle escaping her. "Well, I like you." She said with a sort of childish giddiness. There was something that switched off in a grown man and woman when they were having a moment like this. It made them sound like children. In a good way. In a cute way.

"Well, I like you more!" I smiled back.

"Well then, I love you." She said with a sigh, but not a bored kind of sigh.

"But I love you more." I shot back.

"Oh really now?" She laughed, that beautiful genuine loving Emily laugh. "Boy, it takes about half of the love of the world to love you." She wrapped her arms around me.

"And the other half is taken to love you." I smiled wider. I swear both of our smiles were about as wide as the Marianas Trench by now. She pulled, more like dragged, me closer to her until we were practically touching. We stared at each other, smiling at each other like the idiot, childish lovebirds we were, for what seemed like an eternity. I realized that Emily and I were suddenly closer than we ever were before. It was like the lightbulb that kept her fury burning had been overloaded and then burnt out in the store in Wakita.


	7. Dark Tunnels

**A/N: From now on, the story will follow the show's storyline, just with Emily and Michael thrown in (which obviously means that some dialogue which is not in the show will occur)**

The tunnels were dark. We had run out of food a few days earlier. We were all hungry, but we hoped we wouldn't be soon enough. Citizen Z was leading us through this tunnel system to a guy who would give us food, water, and shelter for a few days before we continued on.

Emily had been forced to begrudgingly abandon the truck and her beloved 50-cal machine-gun. I still carried the M14, but Emily had to use the machete.

As we rounded a corner, there was a lone Z stumbling about. Addy made a joke to Mack that I didn't hear, then she casually strolled up to the Z and smacked the spiked bat into its head. She turned back with a curt smile and we continued on.

Something had been...off...about Addy since we'd met her. I figured it maybe had something to do with how upset she was at the time we first met her. Whatever it was, I wish Mack-or someone, maybe Emily-could get her to snap out of it because by the looks of it, she was going insane. Another corner or two and suddenly there was a lot of movement and a bit of shouting.

Mack said, "Roberta!" To the woman in the lead of the other group, who had a stern look on her face. She looked like she could be someone from the military, like Emily.

"Mack! Addy! Oh, thank god." The woman muttered, hugging the both of them. "And, uh, who are you?" She asked when she saw Emily and I.

"Oh, joy. More people want to risk their lives for me." Murphy muttered.

"Sergeant Emily Erlin, 2nd Marine Division." Emily quickly replied, ignoring the demizombie's sarcasm. "Served two tours in Afghanistan, was on leave when the Z's attacked. Saved this kid," She gave me a light, half-playful shove, "from an overly-attached girlfriend, you could say."

"You know it was my best-" I started, but she cut me off with a quick gesture of the hand.

"Uh uh uh, this is MY story...Anyway, it was a lot of aimless drifting around. We stayed mostly in the Midwest. There was a crazy tornado that sucked up Z's and threw them around..."

"Yeah, we uh...we saw that..." Roberta said, fighting back the emotions and memories rushing like a flood, inevitably of Garrett.

"We found ourselves in eastern Tennesee after that, but it wasn't long before we were chased west by the huge horde. Zunami, that guy on the radio called it."

"You mean, Citizen Z?" Roberta raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, him. So we met Mack and Addy somewhere around the Texas-Oklahoma border. They told us that they were on a mission to get some guy with the Z vaccine to California where a scientist was that could use him to save the world. And we decided to come along and help them link back up with that group and get that guy to where he needs to be." Emily finished.

"Yeah, well, we're 'that group', and Murphy there is 'that guy'..." Roberta muttered. "According to Citizen Z, this place is up just a little bit further."

So we headed off in that direction. There was a room, a rather bland room that appeared to be nothing but solid concrete with a desk and chair, with a old box-type TV in the far corner. The smell of death hung in the air, however. Our contact had died some time before we got there, shot himself in the side of the head.

"We should probably make sure he's dead." Someone said, I think the Asian girl, Cassandra was her name I believe.

Addy took up the job. I was right about something being "off" about her. She smacked the spikes into his head way too many times. Unnecessarily. There was a furious look about her eyes, one that I remember seeing in Emily at the store in Wakita. But Addy wasn't like Emily. For Addy to be that angry meant she was probably insane.

"Addy, hey, hey, hey! That's enough, okay?" Mack pulled her away gently.

"Is she okay?" Roberta murmured.

"Yeah. Yeah, uh, just give her a minute." Mack replied.

The next thing I remember, we were in a conference room down the hall chatting with Citizen Z about the mission on a massive screen built into the wall.

"Ah, welcome to the party, Mike and Emily!" He said. "I'm glad you could join us for this wonderful time of trying to stay alive. Anyway, how's the contact?"

"Dead." Roberta said.

"Oh. And uh, where's Murphy? Can I see him?"

Murphy made his way between Cassandra and I and showed himself to Citizen Z. "Great! But, uh, you don't look so good, there. We've got to get you to Colorado as soon as possible."

"Colorado?" Roberta raised an eyebrow.

"Oh yeah. You're going to Colorado now, not California. I don't know what happened to the lab in California, but I have confirmed that the last known location of Dr. Merch is at an Air Force hospital in Colorado."

"This just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?" Murphy muttered sarcastically.


	8. Sisters of Mercy, Part 1

**A/N: For the "Sister Of Mercy" chapters, I'll be taking a different approach, switching between Emily and Michael's perspectives as Emily is inside the camp and Michael waits outside with the other guys.**

**Also! I decided to add in a reference that "fun times", if you know what I mean, happened with Emily and Michael just after Chapter 6 ends. I'm not sure whether I should add it in because I've never written a sex scene before and I'm not sure how to describe it.**

* * *

A few days later, we were completely out of food and dangerously low on water in the middle of a blazing hot desert. Finally, we came upon the entrance of a canyon, which was closed off by a gate. The women got out first, but as soon as Doc and the rest of the guys stepped out of the truck, women with every kind of gun under the sun appeared above us on the canyon tops, on either side. More women came from the gate.

"Welcome to our humble home." A middle-aged, gray-haired woman said, in the middle of the group from the gate. "I'm Helen." There was some conversing with Roberta for a minute, then Helen stated, "The women may come in, but the men must stay outside."

A look of confusion spread across my face, and Emily had an expression of doubt.

"Don't worry, she'll be in good hands." Helen said, retaining a sort of stern look, though I wasn't sure if it was from the sun being in her eyes or not.

"We're just here to get help for Cassandra, then we'll leave." Emily whispered.

I wanted to complain about how we'd hadn't been apart since we met, but I didn't. I only gave a small nod and a weak smile.

Emily knew I was nervous and maybe a little upset. "It'll be fine, okay? I promise. Besides, you aren't really alone. You've got Murphy, Mack, Doc, and 10K..."

"You mean the stoner, the cynical jerkbag demizombie, the overly-attached boyfriend, and a kid with an obsession for killing Z's? Yeah, great group of guys!" I said sarcastically.

Emily smiled and shot back, "Sometimes I could call you an overly-attached boyfriend." She gently squeezed my hand reassuringly.

"Come along, now, dear." Helen called suddenly, and Emily left my side for the first time in three years.

* * *

I hated, hated, hated leaving Michael like that. It was almost painful. But this Helen woman was very demanding, and we desperately needed food, water, and treatment for Cassandra's leg. So I went with Roberta, Cassandra, and Addy into this so-called "women's haven". It was a beautiful place, but I still hated leaving Michael in the desert back there.

Addy immediately connected with a little girl who ran off with her to play some kind of game. Roberta and I were left to help out Cassandra.

"I'm worried about Addy." I murmured to Roberta.

"Me, too." Roberta replied. "Something snapped in her a while ago, sometime after when we were separated from them."

"When Michael and I found them, Addy was crying uncontrollably for some reason. Do you think whatever it was she was crying about, that's what did it?"

Roberta shrugged.

* * *

There was nothing around for miles, nothing except this truck, these guys, and women pointing guns at us from 20 feet up. I had never felt so out of place in my life, even with all this hellish stuff with the Z's. There was a blanket in the bed of the truck that Mack had laid down to try and block the sun's heat from the metal of the truck. That's where he and I sat now, casually chatting away like old friends.

"I wish Emily would talk to Addy, get her to snap to reality. I hate to break it to you, Mack, but she's not all there." I said after a break in conversation.

"I know." Mack replied. "For some reason, I don't think there's any way to find all the missing pieces in order to put her completely back together."

"Emily can do it, Mack. I don't think Addy has had such a close friend since this began." I reassured him, though I wasn't sure myself.

The conversation allowed us to miss the fun Murphy was about to have. Stupid, desperate woman. Who knew a blueberry pie could work up a man to the point of borderline seduction? I was kind of glad I didn't have to see what happened in that little tent-thing. I did hear that woman's laugh, though. It made me feel lonely, now that Emily wasn't there next to me, and maybe just a little jealous even though Emily and I's "first time" had happened that day in the forest. I realized we hadn't even talked about it after it happened.

"Hey, you know something?" I suddenly found myself saying to Mack. "Do you know why we were up on that hill so long?" He shrugged and I gave him a sort of tell-tale look.

A look of shock spread across his face, but it quickly subsided. "No...really? Out in the forest, man?! You couldn't have even waited until we got to the next town, in a house or something?"

"Hey, it was Emily that wanted it, and Emily that controlled it." I laughed.

"You suck at being a man." Mack shot back, a grin plastered on his face.

I shrugged. "And? Just because I have a dick doesn't mean I have to be manly."

* * *

I hoped Michael was okay with the group of guys. He should be with Mack, at least. Mack was a good guy, not too much unlike Mike. I don't think any of us had had good friends like these since the beginning of the end of the world.

Addy still wasn't back, which worried me. None of us knew that she wasn't with that little girl anymore, that she was talking with that psycho lady Helen and that she was becoming attached to her. It makes me shudder, thinking about it now.

It wasn't all that long before we were summoned to an empty field with a barn at the end of it. It seemed like the entire community was there. In front stood Helen and a few women, and between them and the rest of the crowd was a man.

"This man has been evil to his wife! He had beat her, nearly killed her! He shall be shown justice! He shall know how a woman feels when they are treated poorly by men!" There was a short pause in Helen's speech. "Open the doors!"


End file.
